Have you ever heard of a term called "moral licensing"? It's the idea that if you do something moral or virtuous, your mind gives you something of a pass when you do something immoral. It's the idea that the immediate temporal feeling about your principles is often decided in the moment based on how much moral debt is owed to you. The chances of you doing something unethical are much higher after you do something you feel is virtuous.
There's real psychology behind this, and you see it more than you think. Corporations use moral licensing all the time to get you to buy various products. There's a reason many slap things like "ethically sourced" or "cruelty-free" on their products. You can look up their business practices on your own if you really want to know if they don't test on animals or cut down the rainforest. The point of it is for you to feel good about yourself for purchasing their product and feeling a sense of moral superiority for doing so. It keeps you coming back so you can build that debt up with every purchase.
Politics practically runs on moral licensing, but mostly on the Left, and it happens in a very weird way.
For most people, their moral relatively starts in neutral. You do a good thing, you get a pass for a bad thing. You do a bad thing, you feel guilt until you make it up with a good thing.
But for hard leftists, they believe they constantly live in a state of moral debt, and that debt gets worse based on your identity. In fact, the more your identity drifts into the status of victimhood, the more moral currency you have. However, if you're white and middle to upper-class, your victimhood status is pretty shallow. Best to adopt some qualifiers like "non-binary" or "bisexual" just to pad your stats.
The hard leftist believes that they need to do and say things that pay back that debt. They must express beliefs, attend the right events, support the right corporations, firebomb the ones they don't like, assault the right people, and believe the right claims, no matter how unserious or ridiculous, all to pay that debt back for living in a civilization that they'll happily tell you is evil but secretly feel is too comfortable to leave.
I'll show you a perfect example. Watch this video of a woman who showed up to pay respects to Renee Good, the woman who tried to run an ICE agent over and got shot for her troubles. The woman wants to be seen supporting the Left's latest martyr, but also wants to be seen acknowledging that this white woman who died is white and thus not as much of a martyr as someone with more melanin in their skin.
In fact, she says verbatim, "White tears are not always something that's helpful or necessary" before figuratively kneeling at the altar of racial politics.
Leftist woman says she “feels wrong” for paying her respects to Renee Good because she’s a “white woman who’s privileged.”
— Breaking911 (@Breaking911) January 9, 2026
“White tears are not helpful.”pic.twitter.com/ReJat6GgJU
The funny part is, you'd think this supposed dearth of moral currency would keep the leftists humble. It doesn't. In fact, their moral debt is held by specific groups, not to society itself. When it comes to society, everyone owes leftists a debt because their consistent payments of fealty and deference to the non-privileged are way more than yours, which makes them way better than you.
So they look down on you, spit on you, burn your things, and beat you up because in their mind, you're an absolute piece of garbage for not acknowledging and paying your debt to the "victims" of our civilization, and griefing you as hard as they do helps them pay back their moral debt.
This is why Good (hell of an ironic name) tried to run over an ICE officer with an honest-to-God smile on her face.
This is how leftists can believe obvious lies and engage in cognitive dissonance without guilt. It's because the very act of doing so assuages the guilt they've been told to have. They are paying back their debt with every ridiculous action.
Once again, the psychology of the leftists and their derangement is infinitely interesting.
